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(Epic Spectacle; Power Play; Romances)
The grandest of grand operas, Aida evokes all the monumentality of ancient Egypt to frame what is in essence an intimate and poignant love story. Verdi’s score balances the epic and the deeply personal and is matched by the Met’s simultaneously towering and insightful production.
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(Vocal Fireworks; Myths and Legends)
In their third collaboration, Richard Strauss and writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal created one of opera’s wittiest masterpieces. Set in 18th-century Vienna, it is based on the premise that a clown show and a serious mythological opera have to be performed at the same time on the same stage to accommodate a rich man’s party schedule. The Met’s production by Elijah Moshinsky, designed by Tony Award winner Michael Yeargan, captures both backstage drama and onstage magic.
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(Vocal Fireworks; Women on the Edge; Myths and Legends; Romances)
Tony award-winning director Mary Zimmerman’s Met premiere production showcases the artistry of Renée Fleming in the title role of this beguiling and unusual work, based on an epic fantasy set in the time of the Crusades. A powerful sorceress manipulating the destinies of men for personal and political gain, Armida in the end is defeated by love. Rossini’s buoyant score features vocal pyrotechnics, atmospheric effects, and what may be the only all-tenor trio in opera. Armida “is like a buried treasure, a box of jewels,” Zimmerman says. “It has an epic, enchanted quality and a tremendous visual element.”
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(Myths and Legends; Power Play)
Conductor Riccardo Muti makes his Met debut conducting this little-known gem by the young Verdi, in a Met premiere production conceived by a thrilling assembly of talent: Pierre Audi directs, with sets and costumes designed by fashion icon Miuccia Prada and renowned architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (who created the “Bird’s Nest” stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics). Attila, according to Herzog, “describes the moment in history where an old world is collapsing and something new is rising out of the rubble. It’s a moment of uncertainty and instability, and new powers are emerging. It is not unlike a situation we live in right now.”
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(Vocal Fireworks; Comedy; Page to Stage; For the Family)
Opera’s most enduringly popular comedy finds new vigor in Bartlett Sher’s hilarious and charming production. The novel staging provides an intimate showcase for the comedic and vocal talents of the stars, which this season include soprano Diana Damrau and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who share the role of the wily and irresistible Rosina.
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(Real People, Real Problems; Romances)
The world’s most popular opera is an inexhaustible treasure trove of genuine feeling, a revelation in music of the details that make up the human experience in modern times. Presented at the Met in Franco Zeffirelli’s ingenious production—which still draws gasps and applause more than 25 years after its premiere—La Bohème remains an essential operatic experience.
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(Women on the Edge; Desperados; Page to Stage; Real People, Real Problems; Romances)
A true opera classic returns to the Met in a new production by Olivier Award-winning director Richard Eyre. “Carmen is about sex, violence, and racism—and its corollary: freedom,” Eyre says about his approach. “I think it should be shocking.” The captivating Elīna Garanča takes on Bizet’s title heroine—a force of nature whose lust for life has an equal power to destroy—for the first time at the Met. Roberto Alagna reprises his acclaimed portrayal of the jealous Don José. Up-and-coming Canadian conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin makes his Met debut on the podium. Jonas Kaufmann, Olga Borodina, and Angela Gheorghiu star in later performances.
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(Vocal Fireworks; Desperados; Myths and Legends; Page to Stage; Romances; Mind Games)
Bartlett Sher, director of the Met’s hit production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Tony Award winner for South Pacific, returns to stage Offenbach’s psychological masterpiece. His Kafkaesque vision of this opera is a “magical journey in which the title character works out different manifestations of his psyche.” James Levine conducts a powerful cast led by Joseph Calleja as the poet whose tales of macabre and tragic romances form the basis of the story. Anna Netrebko is Antonia, the young girl doomed to sing herself to death, and Alan Held plays the demonic four villains who orchestrate Hoffmann’s romantic catastrophes.
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(Desperados; Epic Spectacle; Myths and Legends; Page to Stage)
Hector Berlioz’s genre-bending imagination transforms the legend of the old philosopher who trades his soul for one moment of perfect bliss, creating a dramatic experience almost too hallucinatory to be realized on the operatic stage. The Met’s production by acclaimed theater artist Robert Lepage makes use of virtual scenery, interactive video, and aerial acrobatics, taking this extraordinary work to levels of visual magic rarely encountered before. Berlioz’s score, mystifying to his contemporaries, still retains a sense of what it was called a century and a half ago the “music of the future.”
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(Women on the Edge; Myths and Legends; Page to Stage; Mind Games)
Richard Strauss pushed music to its tonal limits in this harrowing psychological drama that boasts one of the most challenges scores, for both the orchestra and the singers, in all of opera. A shattering tragedy, Elektra recreates the power of Greek mythology through the disturbing perceptions of early 20th-century Vienna, including the then-recent discoveries of Freud, to pack a singular operatic wallop in less than two hours.
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(Vocal Fireworks; Comedy; For the Family)
A frothy comedy whose charm frames some of the most demanding and thrilling music ever composed for the human voice, Donizetti’s buoyant romp returns to the Met in Laurent Pelly hilarious’s production. The dazzling artistry of Diana Damrau and Juan Diego Flórez will be on captivating display. The great Kiri Te Kanawa makes a guest appearance in the speaking role of the Duchess of Krakenthorp.
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(Women on the Edge; Desperados; Myths and Legends; Mind Games)
Wagner’s early romantic opera is among the most evocative and haunting in the repertory, an otherworldly tale of the cursed sea captain who must sail for eternity unless he finds true love. Surrounding this one-of-a-kind love story is a powerful score that includes storm music, lusty sailor songs, dramatic confrontations, and even a chorus for the Dutchman’s undead crew.
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(Desperados; Page to Stage; Power Play; Mind Games)
Janáček’s final opera, based on Dosteyevsky’s shattering semi-autobiographical novel set in a Siberian prison community, is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. “The penal camp is a different society, parallel to ours, but there are many similarities between the two,” director Patrice Chéreau explains. “Power, relationships, humiliation, passion—all those things exist in both worlds.” Chéreau, best known for his history-making centennial staging of Wagner’s Ring in Bayreuth, and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen both make their Met debuts with this company premiere production, which won raves when it was first seen in Europe in 2007.
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(Vocal Fireworks; Women on the Edge; Page to Stage; Power Play; Mind Games)
Ambroise Thomas’s romantic Shakespeare adaptation returns to the Met stage for the first time in more than a century, in a new production by Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser. Conductor Louis Langrée leads a cast of top-notch singers who provide both the vocal brilliance and the dramatic and emotional depth the tragedy requires. The charismatic Simon Keenleyside stars as the Bard’s most complex character, opposite the electrifying Natalie Dessay, whose doomed love for the elusive Prince of Denmark provokes one of operas most striking and extensive mad scenes.
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(Myths and Legends; Comedy; Page to Stage; For the Family)
This fairy tale favorite, the Met’s holiday presentation for families, functions on two levels at once: as a delightful children’s story and as a psychological fright-fest. Both aspects of this timeless story are explored in the evocative music of Engelbert Humperdink and in Richard Jones’s fascinating English-language production.
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(Women on the Edge; Page to Stage; Mind Games)
Fascinating and disturbing in equal measure, Lulu is one of the defining creations of 20th-century art. This story of a woman who uses and is used by men to meet a tragic end finds its ideal musical counterpart in Alban Berg’s modernist score, resulting in a work that is as theatrically gripping as it is historically significant. Marlis Petersen, who has built a reputation on her interpretation of the enthralling title character, stars in this revival, opposite Anne Sofie von Otter and James Morris, conducted by Met Music Director James Levine.
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(Desperados; Comedy; Page to Stage; Mind Games)
Shostakovich’s exuberant setting of Gogol’s absurdist masterpiece about a nose gone missing is quirky, disturbing, and oddly fun. This Met premiere production is directed and co-designed by William Kentridge, whose innovative use of non-traditional media has made him a leading figure in today’s art world. “I love about this opera that anything is possible,” he says. Eminent Shostakovich interpreter Valery Gergiev, who has brought many Russian operas to international audiences, conducts Tony Award winning baritone Paulo Szot (South Pacific) as the man whose olfactory organ inexplicably leaves his face to pursue an independent existence.
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(Comedy; Page to Stage; Power Play)
Mozart’s elegant comedy with dark undertones is a masterful marriage of suggestive words and even more suggestive music. Lorenzo Da Ponte’s ingenious libretto and Mozart’s sublime score explore the gap between what people say and what they mean throughout the course of one crazy day. Built around some of the most beautiful melodies ever written, this opera of class confusion at court takes the audience on a profound journey through deceit, folly, and love.
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(Comedy; Romances)
Richard Strauss’s sumptuous vision of love and comic intrigue in a mythical Vienna of the past continues to sweep away audiences with its magnificent melody and its sophisticated and winsome drama. James Levine leads a spectacular cast, headed by the remarkable pairing of Renée Fleming as the worldly Marschallin and Susan Graham as the young “Knight of the Rose” who loves her.
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(Epic Spectacle; Power Play)
Forty years into a legendary Met career, tenor Plácido Domingo makes history by taking on the baritone title role of Verdi’s dark drama. A compelling portrayal of a man who is both a leader and an outsider, this tragedy is also a complex vision of individuals amid the political turmoil of early-Renaissance Italy. Less familiar to audiences than some of his hit operas, Boccanegra remains a prime example of Verdi’s genius at its most insightful and humane.
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(Power Play; Real People, Real Problems)
Verdi’s strikingly modern take on a marriage in crisis strayed too far from the operatic conventions of the day and lay dormant and virtually unknown for over a century. Plácido Domingo was one of the first tenors in our own era to take on the title role and bring this work back to the stage. He now conducts the opera, leading a cast headed by the charismatic José Cura as the clergyman who struggles between his ideals and the urge for revenge.
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| (Women on the Edge; Romances)
Acclaimed director Luc Bondy makes his long-awaited Met debut with this new production, which opened the 2009–10 season. “Tosca combines Puccini’s glorious musical inspiration with the melodramatic vitality of one of the great Hitchcock films,” says Music Director James Levine, who conducts Karita Mattila as the passionate diva of the title. Tenors Marcelo Álvarez and Jonas Kaufmann share the role of her lover, the painter Cavaradossi, and George Gagnidze and Bryn Terfel are Scarpia, the sadistic chief of police.
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(Vocal Fireworks; Real People, Real Problems; Romances)
The classic portrayal of the courtesan who is purer than the hypocritical world she inhabits, La Traviata has remained one of Italian opera’s most engaging works since shortly after its premiere. The monumental title role, the wealth of irresistible melody, and the work’s dead-on portrayal of timeless issues keep this poignant drama an evergreen experience.
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(Epic Spectacle; Comedy; Real People, Real Problems)
Il Trittico, which had its world premiere at the Met in 1918, is Puccini’s most ambitious night of theater, a triptych of one-act operas that cover the human experience from misery to religion to hope and finally to laughter. Jack O’Brien’s monumental production premiered in 2007. This season’s revival boasts a spectacular cast headed, in a remarkable tour-de-force, by Patricia Racette and Stephanie Blythe starring in all three operas.
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(Epic Spectacle; Myths and Legends; Romances)
A fairy tale set in a mythical ancient China, Turandot tells the story of an icy princess who executes all suitors who fail to answer her three riddles, and of the unknown prince who conquers her with love. It’s everything people love about Puccini—and more: a treasure trove of ravishing melody, including the great tenor aria “Nessun dorma,” a masterpiece of surprisingly modern orchestral and choral effects, and, in Franco Zeffirelli’s breathtaking production, a epic spectacle like few others.
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(Vocal Fireworks; Myths and Legends; Comedy; For the Family)
Mozart’s timeless fairy tale is given a dazzling and inventive twist in Julie Taymor’s production, which incorporates enchanting puppetry and whimsical choreography. Telling the story of two distinctly different men embarking on a mystical quest, the score combines unequalled beauty with psychological insight, dizzying vocal pyrotechnics, and some of the most beloved and popular tunes in the history of opera.
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